Giant nonreciprocal transmission in low-biased gyrotropic metasurfaces

Strong magneto-optical effect with low external magnetic field is of great importance to achieve high-performance isolators in modern optics. Here, we experimentally demonstrate a significant enhancement of the magneto-optical effect and nonreciprocal chiral transmission in low-biased gyrotropic media. A designer magneto-optical metasurface consists of a gyrotropy-near-zero slab doped with magnetic resonant inclusions. The immersed magnetic dopants enable efficient nonreciprocal light-matter interactions at the subwavelength scale, providing a giant macroscopic nonreciprocity and strong robustness against the bias disturbance. Microwave measurements reveal that the metasurface can act as a chiral isolator for circular polarization, with extremely weak intrinsic gyromagnetic activity. We also demonstrate its capability of signal isolation for circularly polarized antennas. Our findings provide an experimental verification of nonreciprocal photonic doping with low static magnetic fields.